Monday, June 06, 2005

the complanate culinary learning curve of jeremy freese



While a woman I went to graduate school with recently won $100,000 in a cooking contest, I cannot microwave popcorn without starting a fire. An especially annoying thing about last night's debacle is that I hadn't made microwave popcorn for more than a year, although only belatedly did I remember why: because the last time I did, the bag also burst into flames. My smoke alarm didn't go off, which puzzled me at first, but I think what happened is that I jarred the battery loose when I beat it to get it to stop during the First Popcorn Fire.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh Please ... it looks like The Picture of Dorian Gray ....

jeremy said...

Indeed, the way they did the special effect in the movie was by burning up some popcorn.

goesh said...

I am reminded of my Hippy days and my sole LSD trip - the ol' fried brain.

dorotha said...

where you inspired by my burnt popcorn to burn your own popcorn?

Anonymous said...

You might want to try running the microwave for less time. Or double checking to make sure you're not somehow attaching metal fragments to your popcorn bag. And for God's sake, don't light the bag on fire before you put it in the microwave!

jeremy said...

It's the time that is the issue. My microwave apparently has unusually high wattage/waveage.

Anonymous said...

My microwave has a handy-dandy Popcorn button! Of course, now that I spend ten days every semester making popcorn every evening during my movie fest, I don't make popcorn at home anymore...
-jnsys

Anonymous said...

For a minute, I thought the picture was your friend's prize-winning entry. I was ready to decry the state of contemporary cuisine...

Anonymous said...

I'm wondering about the expectation state that Camilla's recipe title aroused in the judges. Do you thnk that influenced the results? I think it's a great descriptive title! I did not examine the link closely, but would be interested to know what the judging process is for a national chicken cooking contest with a $100,000 grand prize. Just to know how the taste/look/name/etc factor into their decisions. _Is it any wonder_ I've never wondered about that before now.

I also wonder what all of those prize-winning dishes tasted [like]...

Do you have a revolving plate in your microwave? If the popcorn's catching fire partly because the bag's getting caught in one place, instead of revolving, then there are a series of folding rituals that can be done to ward off the evil firestarters lurking in most high-powered microwaves. They all finish with _do a little dance and then you drink a little water_. ~jlp.

jeremy said...

Camilla had already won a variety of other cooking contests, incidentally, before pulling down the $100K haul. She's an extraordinarily gifted individual.